The authors, Marcus Persson (PhD in sociology) and Elin Thunman (PhD in sociology) work at the Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden. Thunman is the project manager and Persson co-worker in the research project ‘Teachers without borders. Professional ethical challenges when teachers use social network sites like Facebook for pupil contacts’. The Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) funds the project. The article, ‘Boundary practices and social media: the case of teachers’ use of Facebook to communicate with pupils’, draws upon the interview data about teachers’ perceptions about their professional usage of Facebook for pupil communication.

Boundary Practices and Social Media: The Case of Teachers’ Use of Facebook to Communicate with Pupils

Marcus Persson, Elin Thunman

Abstract

The increasing integration of information and communication technologies in work life have fueled the interest in boundary blurring effects on work-home balance. Teachers is an occupational group that has been particularly fast to adopt social media as work tool, however, little is known about how they use of social media in relation to boundary blurring effects. The aim of this study is to inquire into how teachers manage boundaries between home and work domains when using Facebook as work tool to communicate with pupils. Qualitative interviews were done with secondary teachers from three schools about their use of Facebook and their experiences of boundary work. The narratives were inductively categorized according to the main practices deployed by the teachers and interpreted with the help of boundary theory. The findings are presented according to three main practices – virtual, physical, and communicative – that the teachers adopt to integrate and segment home and work domain using Facebook.